


Did You Forget to Turn Up the Volume, Sir?

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: Autumn Fever (Whumptober 2020) [12]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Light-Hearted, Personal Canon, School, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27099655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: Losing your voice during a lecture really isn't convenient. Especially if you're the one doing the lecture.
Series: Autumn Fever (Whumptober 2020) [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966432
Kudos: 2





	Did You Forget to Turn Up the Volume, Sir?

**Author's Note:**

> Something something "yes this is GCB again, whatcha gonna do? Cry?". My deepest apologies to my man Cheren for the brain laser focus on him and his misery.
> 
> That prompt, "Strep Throat", was the bane of my evening last night, but I managed to whip up something by the end of the next day, I guess. It's short and really not that good, I know, but sometimes you just want to skip to the next prompt and tbh that's me right about now.  
> The only reason why I didn't skip altogether is because I thought of having a character lose their voice and that seemed pretty funny enough to write about it. I'll have to come back to it later on, it could be very funny.

Throat like sandpaper, skin covered in a sheen of hot sweat, neck strangled by his tie, he trudges on. He may be drugged with half a dozen cough drops and three headache pills and barely hanging on his feet because being sick will drain your energy dry like nothing else will, but really, it’s not like he has a lot of other options. He isn’t going to suddenly leave when he’s been there since this morning, right? He can always sleep it off when coming home.

That is, if his throat will even allow him to sleep tonight. That’s far from a guarantee, if anything from today is to go by.

His students are giving him all sorts of funny looks, so he supposes he isn’t as slick and strong-looking as he’d want to be – blame that on the chills, the excessive sweating, the broken voice in which he slips more and more with each word he tries to say out loud with… _varying_ degrees of success. Success which he isn’t going to see for much longer, judging by how intense the pain in his throat has gotten over the last few hours.

His sluggish speed must have gone noticed too, because he just tripped on a shoelace he didn’t know was untied until now, magnificently falling face first on the ground.

“Sir?!” He heard about half a dozen students tell him as he heard footsteps coming in his direction. When his face was finally off the ground and back to a position where it could see, he was faced with worried expressions all around him who kept multiplying.

_Uh-oh, you’ve done one heck of a mistake, Cheren._

“I’m fine,” he replies with that parody of a voice. _Not convincing_ , to say the least. “Let’s just… go back… to…”

 _-our exercises_ never exits his mouth, instead sending him into a spiral of never-ending coughing once more.

_Time out, please give him a time-out._

Take two it is, then.

“Ba… ck… to…”

Coughing again.

Don’t tell him his voice’s gone extinct on him like that.

Couldn’t have it waited until he’d be home, in his bed, away from the prying eyes of, again, his _students_? No, of course not! Like Angela would say, it wouldn’t be funny if it wasn’t humiliating him.

Well, the humiliation isn’t the worst thing on his plate right now. No, that’d be that he is now unable to _communicate_ with his students. They’ll probably notice soon enough that he’s got no voice to tell them anything in, but from then, what do they do? Trying to put everything into gestures is only going to confuse everyone involved further if their interpretation is wrong. He knows some basics of sign language he taught himself when he first got the teaching job, but that’s it, and he’s pretty sure a wide majority of the class (most unfortunately) doesn’t know sign language at all. It’s not like he’s got much knowledge of it either.

Okay, plan B. He goes to fetch Angela. She explains the situation to them. Maybe she even gives him the good stuff that will make this throat work again. Then they can all go home so he can bury himself in his little garden for an hour or two and come back with… Okay, probably shouldn’t do that. Burying himself in blankets and getting drunk on tea with way too much honey put into it sounds like a much better, proficient option.

…or one of his students can go do so for him, sparing him the trouble of having to silently explain something to her, while everyone else physically convinces him to rest. (The phrasing is wonky, but he knows what he’s saying, or rather, he doesn’t know how to put into words having his own students try pinning him to the ground by the shoulders despite their height differences).

And so he waits, sitting on the ground, Stoutland offering its fur as a pillow for his back. The demon in his throat hasn’t settled down and being forced not to do anything makes all of the day strike back onto his face with no mercy whatsoever. He can only hope nobody’s going to be mad at him for whatever just happened. It doesn’t seem like they are, unlike what he expected, considering he nods a lot to the question “are you ok?” and shakes his head at “do you need something?”. Heh, lucky him, huh, voiceless with a bunch of kids mothering over him.

Soon enough, the person he was going to fetch for himself arrives. In a clear, loud voice, she tells everyone that class is over and that they can go back home now if they want to. He’d have never done such a thing by himself, but he supposes it makes sense. It’s not like his voice is going to come back by the end of the afternoon anyway, considering it’s already past four. (But, you know, nagging professionalism creeping in the edges of his mind).

“Only _morons_ continue to make class with a strep throat like you do,” Angela tells him as she scoops him up from the floor, an arm around his waist. She’s trying to sound angry, but she just doesn’t, instead smirking at him mockingly. This situation clearly amuses her. Because why wouldn’t it? She loves to make fun of him, that’s nothing new. At least, she saves him from his own troubles enough for him not to be mad at her, that’s a plus, right?

Equivalent exchange, he supposes.


End file.
